Quick update:
I have a new page that shows the exercise I have been doing, at a relatively coarse level, you cannot actually see what I did with too much detail during the exercise, but you can see what I have been up to. Check it out here. You can also see it anytime you want by clicking Monthly Exercise Logs over there under Content on the right.
Also I found out when I logged in that you can look at the blog in a bunch of different views. I thought it was pretty cool. You an check out the views here, I have put it into my favourite, you can change the view where it says "sidebar" in the top left. In doing this, looking specifically at the mosaic and snapshot views, I realized how few photos I have on the blog - will make sure I change that going forward.
The views don't show any of the Ads so I am not sure how long they are going to last in their current form. The Ads I have on the site here I did for a bit of a joke, I have earned one cent so far. Cashing in.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Oh I am so Lazy ...
Sorry - it has been a while. Almost 15 days! Rubbish. Probably have lost all my readership! I gather this will have to be good, regain some momentum. So, this is going to be quick and punchy.
Two weeks ago:
Monday (14th): Swimming, an old guy on my right and a 8 year old girl on my left, both making me look slow. The old guy's gut was hanging down, but not slowing him down. The only consolation I had was he stopped before I did. The little girl - she was wearing flippers, but she was rocketing up and down the pool. I do just under a mile and a half (1.4 miles/2.3km) 100 laps. I realize that another 6 laps will take me to 1.5miles - that is my new goal.
Wednesday (16th): Riding with Colleen, we did the Alpine loop in reverse. Weird to do the same ride backwards, uphill when it usually down, etc. Colleen had a great ride. Her moving average is over 16mph. She passes some guys who I smile at as I ride past them in her wake.
Thursday (17th): Swimming, do two-thirds of a mile, not really feeling like it. Probably still emasculated due to being constantly lapped by little girls last time I swam. My goggles feel too tight, my cap feels like it is sliding off ... wait a minute am I becoming a little girl!?!
Saturday (19th): Snowboarding, takes nearly 15 hours end-to-end to get to the cabin in Tahoe. Due to the late arrival at the cabin (5am) no one is very keen to start early. We get to the slopes around midday and ski till about close. Colleen does well, I do OK. I have one fall that hurts my knee a little that scared me a little. I take the tricky GPS watch and hold it checking my speed every now and again. The top speed I see is 32 mph. I thought I could go faster but we were sticking to the junior blue runs to keep me safe.
All-in-all it is a fairly light week. I get most of my exercise over the weekend digging the car out Sunday morning. The weather is really killing the riding and running and isn't making going to the pool easy.
One week ago:
Tuesday (22nd): Swimming, do the 106 laps to get to 1.5 miles (2.41 km). 2 laps warm-up, 100 laps, then 4 laps cool down.
Wednesday (23rd): Running, Colleen has been off 8 weeks, so we go for a run. Just a little out and back and we keep it fairly slow. She does well considering it has been so long since she has run. She makes it through without any pain. My knee feels a little dodgy all the way through. Probably still a little tender after the fall while snowboarding. We do 2.5 miles averaging 9:47 min/miles.
Sunday (27th): Riding with Colleen, do the normal loop. Just a lazy ride to wrap up the weekend on the only barely nice day of the week. The weather is still really killing the riding and running and still isn't making it easy to go to the pool.
Another slow week and I still haven't picked a Triathlon. I need some focus. I will try to find one ASAP.
Two weeks ago:
Monday (14th): Swimming, an old guy on my right and a 8 year old girl on my left, both making me look slow. The old guy's gut was hanging down, but not slowing him down. The only consolation I had was he stopped before I did. The little girl - she was wearing flippers, but she was rocketing up and down the pool. I do just under a mile and a half (1.4 miles/2.3km) 100 laps. I realize that another 6 laps will take me to 1.5miles - that is my new goal.
Wednesday (16th): Riding with Colleen, we did the Alpine loop in reverse. Weird to do the same ride backwards, uphill when it usually down, etc. Colleen had a great ride. Her moving average is over 16mph. She passes some guys who I smile at as I ride past them in her wake.
Thursday (17th): Swimming, do two-thirds of a mile, not really feeling like it. Probably still emasculated due to being constantly lapped by little girls last time I swam. My goggles feel too tight, my cap feels like it is sliding off ... wait a minute am I becoming a little girl!?!
Saturday (19th): Snowboarding, takes nearly 15 hours end-to-end to get to the cabin in Tahoe. Due to the late arrival at the cabin (5am) no one is very keen to start early. We get to the slopes around midday and ski till about close. Colleen does well, I do OK. I have one fall that hurts my knee a little that scared me a little. I take the tricky GPS watch and hold it checking my speed every now and again. The top speed I see is 32 mph. I thought I could go faster but we were sticking to the junior blue runs to keep me safe.
All-in-all it is a fairly light week. I get most of my exercise over the weekend digging the car out Sunday morning. The weather is really killing the riding and running and isn't making going to the pool easy.
One week ago:
Tuesday (22nd): Swimming, do the 106 laps to get to 1.5 miles (2.41 km). 2 laps warm-up, 100 laps, then 4 laps cool down.
Wednesday (23rd): Running, Colleen has been off 8 weeks, so we go for a run. Just a little out and back and we keep it fairly slow. She does well considering it has been so long since she has run. She makes it through without any pain. My knee feels a little dodgy all the way through. Probably still a little tender after the fall while snowboarding. We do 2.5 miles averaging 9:47 min/miles.
Sunday (27th): Riding with Colleen, do the normal loop. Just a lazy ride to wrap up the weekend on the only barely nice day of the week. The weather is still really killing the riding and running and still isn't making it easy to go to the pool.
Another slow week and I still haven't picked a Triathlon. I need some focus. I will try to find one ASAP.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
A Week of Idleness and Lethargy ... and a surprise
So, there I was Monday, not really interested in exercise, which flowed into Tuesday, Wednesday and almost into Thursday. I think it was a combination of factors. Firstly I have been doing a fair bit of exercise since I started this side show and secondly since the cancelling of the swim leg and my inability to participate in the Standford Tri, I haven't got a goal at the moment of the next Tri to participate in. Thus finding motivation this week was a little ... difficult.
Thursday
Finally got motivated and out on the bike and around the short Alpine Loop. I started a little under 100% and wasn't pushing myself to my limits but measuring my effort, then as the long up hill started I pushed pretty hard. I was looking at the average speed through the ride and I was keeping it so high that I was worried I would be decreasing it at the end, rather than increasing it. Overall I was incredibly happy with the ride, the fastest average speed ever (moving average of 21.3 mph). Apparently the three days off was worth it!
Saturday
Spent Saturday morning after picking up a bike stand working on the bikes. On the Thursay ride there was a fair bit of water on the road from the recent rains and the bike was a mess. So I cleaned both Colleen's bike an mine and then oiled the chains made sure all the wheels were correctly seated. Check the tire pressures and the brakes. I figure if I am going downhill at over 45 mph (72 km/h) I should probably make sure the bike is in good shape.
After the bike was sorted out - off to soccer. No not a misprint a typo or a lie. I played soccer. Probably not the wisest move, but I was just so keen to go an play, I have no idea why. Up until this point I had no real desire to, partially to not try to hasten my recovery perhaps, partially because I was busy with all this Tri stuff, but whatever was diminishing it evaporated Saturday morning , because I was keen. So Saturday afternoon I was back out on the pitch. Colleen came to make sure that I didn't do anything more silly than I already was in just participating. Luckily or perhaps because of excellent physical preparation nothing untoward happened, at least to my surgically repaired knee. I slipped once, but everything was ok. I ran into Blake and we both fell, bruising him up and bruised the inside of my right knee pretty bad. I also had a lot of very ordinary passes, crosses and three terrible shots on goal.
One and a half hours later I was yanked. Colleen decided that that was enough and I was taken off the pitch. She was a saint or letting me go for that long. Th next day, and the day after that and the day after that I hurt. There is something so much more dynamic running around playing soccer that isn't captured in riding or even running distance or anything in my day-to-day life. My quads hurt, my back hurt, my calves hurt, my groin hurt. I was a mess. The good news is one of the few things that didn't hurt was my left knee, which of course is an awesome result.
It was five calendar months to the day from my surgery (October 12th - March 12th) which was one month faster than I had planned. One hundred and fifty one days or twenty-one weeks and four days. A pretty exciting development, but not one that will repeated regularly. I was pretty cautions through most of it and didn't try anything too clever. Mostly because basic things were beyond me since it has been well over seven month since I last played soccer. A game every other week might be the goal just to get a different sort of running, and to strengthen all those lateral movement muscles.
Sunday
Out for a ride with Colleen around the normal loop in a break in the weather. Colleen was being a little lethargic, due to her lack of exercise through the week as well. However a woman coming down the hill when La Honda meets Portola in front of us gave her the carrot she needed, with a good dose of prodding from your truly. Colleen chased down that woman and then the next guy and then another guy as we went through Woodside.
The highlight of the day though was when Colleen spotted a "bobcat". She yelled at me and we doubled back. I pointed out what a poor idea it was to head back to see a bobcat, but we went anyway. I advised her if it came at us to keep the bike between her and the wild, vicious animal. When we rode back along the line where Colleen saw the "bobcat" we saw a larger than average black house cat sleeping on the fence. Be sure that there was a lot of ribbing about the bobcat during the rest of the ride home ...
So my goals for next week are to do more exercise and select a new Triathlon to aim for.
Thursday
Finally got motivated and out on the bike and around the short Alpine Loop. I started a little under 100% and wasn't pushing myself to my limits but measuring my effort, then as the long up hill started I pushed pretty hard. I was looking at the average speed through the ride and I was keeping it so high that I was worried I would be decreasing it at the end, rather than increasing it. Overall I was incredibly happy with the ride, the fastest average speed ever (moving average of 21.3 mph). Apparently the three days off was worth it!
Saturday
Spent Saturday morning after picking up a bike stand working on the bikes. On the Thursay ride there was a fair bit of water on the road from the recent rains and the bike was a mess. So I cleaned both Colleen's bike an mine and then oiled the chains made sure all the wheels were correctly seated. Check the tire pressures and the brakes. I figure if I am going downhill at over 45 mph (72 km/h) I should probably make sure the bike is in good shape.
After the bike was sorted out - off to soccer. No not a misprint a typo or a lie. I played soccer. Probably not the wisest move, but I was just so keen to go an play, I have no idea why. Up until this point I had no real desire to, partially to not try to hasten my recovery perhaps, partially because I was busy with all this Tri stuff, but whatever was diminishing it evaporated Saturday morning , because I was keen. So Saturday afternoon I was back out on the pitch. Colleen came to make sure that I didn't do anything more silly than I already was in just participating. Luckily or perhaps because of excellent physical preparation nothing untoward happened, at least to my surgically repaired knee. I slipped once, but everything was ok. I ran into Blake and we both fell, bruising him up and bruised the inside of my right knee pretty bad. I also had a lot of very ordinary passes, crosses and three terrible shots on goal.
One and a half hours later I was yanked. Colleen decided that that was enough and I was taken off the pitch. She was a saint or letting me go for that long. Th next day, and the day after that and the day after that I hurt. There is something so much more dynamic running around playing soccer that isn't captured in riding or even running distance or anything in my day-to-day life. My quads hurt, my back hurt, my calves hurt, my groin hurt. I was a mess. The good news is one of the few things that didn't hurt was my left knee, which of course is an awesome result.
It was five calendar months to the day from my surgery (October 12th - March 12th) which was one month faster than I had planned. One hundred and fifty one days or twenty-one weeks and four days. A pretty exciting development, but not one that will repeated regularly. I was pretty cautions through most of it and didn't try anything too clever. Mostly because basic things were beyond me since it has been well over seven month since I last played soccer. A game every other week might be the goal just to get a different sort of running, and to strengthen all those lateral movement muscles.
Sunday
Out for a ride with Colleen around the normal loop in a break in the weather. Colleen was being a little lethargic, due to her lack of exercise through the week as well. However a woman coming down the hill when La Honda meets Portola in front of us gave her the carrot she needed, with a good dose of prodding from your truly. Colleen chased down that woman and then the next guy and then another guy as we went through Woodside.
The highlight of the day though was when Colleen spotted a "bobcat". She yelled at me and we doubled back. I pointed out what a poor idea it was to head back to see a bobcat, but we went anyway. I advised her if it came at us to keep the bike between her and the wild, vicious animal. When we rode back along the line where Colleen saw the "bobcat" we saw a larger than average black house cat sleeping on the fence. Be sure that there was a lot of ribbing about the bobcat during the rest of the ride home ...
So my goals for next week are to do more exercise and select a new Triathlon to aim for.
Monday, March 7, 2011
The Week that was
So after the let down of the Triathlon being cancelled (well truthfully it wasn't cancelled - I just cancelled for _me_ because there were going to be two runs and no swims). I had to make sure I didn't "fall off the wagon" and stop exercising. So I made sure to get out every day ...
Monday:
Into the pool, and I set myself the goal of doing 100 laps, which is about 1.4 miles or 2.25km. I did it in about 44 minutes, which I was pretty happy with. The issue I am currently finding, while there isn't a drop off in the speed the longer I go, but I don't seem to be getting any faster.
Tuesday:
Tried to push myself on the run. Decided to try 5 miles (8 km), I got through it pretty well, just under 40 minutes. My watch said it was 4.9 miles, Google maps said it was 5.1, so I am happy guessing it at 5 miles, so I did it in 8 minute miles (or 5 minute kilometers). Through the run I felt fine. But afterwards it wasn't so good. My knee swelled a little and was a bit achy for the next couple of days, which is a bit of a concern. 5 miles is probably a little to far. I may try two 3 mile runs next week and see how I go.
Wednesday:
Back in the pool, but not really feeling it, and I have to pick up Colleen from the airport, so it has to be short. 50 quick laps (.7 miles, 1.1 km). I forgot my watch and I was in too much of a hurry to check the time properly. I think it was around 20 minutes.
Thursday:
There is a big ride coming up on Saturday, so I try to take it easy. I go out relatively slowly for me riding on my own and I go around the normal loop in just over an hour. There was a lot of time stopped at the lights, with the difference between the total time and the moving time of about 7 minutes, over an hour 7 minutes this is nearly 10%! The moving ride time is 1 hour and 1 minute and my moving average is 19.7. It seems that this "slightly" off full paced ride only slows me down by a minute or 1 mph, but my heart rate was reduced by 10 bpm on average. So while riding at 95% of my top speed, I was 90% of my average "hard working" heart rate average. However without looking too deeply into it - it is easy to see one issue here. Since I know I was basically stopped for 8 minutes - the non-moving time has to be taken into account as well, as these rests may play a big role in reducing the average heart rate overall. Not sure how much time I want to spend "deeply" analyzing the stats, but I have the watch and the ability, if I really want to get the benefit from all the fancy stuff I bought, I probably should *sigh*.
Friday:
Colleen convinces me to go for a walk so we walk around "the dish". As it was getting late we didn't have the chance to do the "normal" dish walk of about 5 miles. So we had to take a different path onto the loop to reduce it so we could get it finished before dark. The walk in total then was just under 4 miles, and we had, what I thought, was a fairly impressive average walking pace of 14:30 minute miles. I think some, if not all of this was born out of Colleen's sense of competition when a mother and daughter went past us right at the start. Colleen saw to it that we caught and passed them. We were so far in front of them, that by the time they were approaching the finish they were still to far away for us to yell insults at them about their slow walking from the car as we drove away. We were that far ahead ...
Saturday:
The big ride. About 6 months ago I promised Koen (a Director at Cisco) a ride when he was back next, however when he called me on it - I had just had the surgery. This time he was out (he works in Amsterdam) I had to deliver. So I planned out a fairly decent ride where we would do about 50 miles. Colleen cam too however she went around the hills that we went over.
We started out picking him up from the hire place, out to OLH (Colleen went straight to the bottom of Canada for pastries). Koen sorted me out up OLH, he was probably finished for a minute before I got to the top. The gears were killing me, I couldn't keep a cadence. I have the new cassette at home and it will be going on this week. However despite that, and Koen. I looked at the clock not too long after I started (33:20), and checked at the top (57:20) and it showed a difference of 24 minutes. Assuming a whole minute had passed at the bottom before I looked Koen still pushed me a minute faster than I had gone before, meaning he must have done it in about 24 minutes. Very well done. I am very keen to see what I can do with the "easier" cassette on the back.
The rest of the ride was fairly tame in comparison. Up Canada, with Koen and I doing a loop through the back of San Mateo and chasing Colleen back down Canada, then back home. All in all about 52 miles with a moving speed of 16.5 mph, which is not too bad considering being on OLH for 30 minutes at about 7mph. Koen did really well on a hired bike (especially on OLH from which i am still smarting). Link to the ride here.
Sunday:
Did feel like doing much, but when Colleen went to Yoga I convinced myself to hit the pool, which I later learnt from this article may be the best thing I could have done. Although it specifically call out riding ... that is close enough to riding in my mind.
I did 2 km (1.24 miles), 88 laps. The tough part was making sure I wasn't passed by those in the laps closest to me. A guy jumped into the lane to my right as i hot about lap 20 and he went fairly quickly for 10 laps before stopping. Then at about lap 30 a guy jumped in sharing my lane and he put me into a bit of tough place trying to keep him from passing me. But a he stopped and started doing sets and I was keeping in front of him while he was doing those as well. The biggest challenge in this self created racing was the girl that started sharing the lane on my right. She was really fast and the only reason she didn't pass me is she started doing backstroke for 2 laps out of every 6 or so. Even then it as tough for me to keep in front of her! In the end I did the 2k (1.24 miles) in less than 37 minutes (the watch said 36:xx but then I bumped the button before memorizing it). That is over 3 miles of swimming this week.
Overall:
I definitely need to get that cassette onto my back wheel for OLH, and then I need to practice so I am ready for Koen's next ride! I need to figure out how to get faster in the pool, which will probably require doing some sort of planned activity, rather than just jumping in the pool and swimming bunch of laps. I need to ensure that the running I do is enough for the exercise I need, but not too much for my knee to handle. I also need to find a new triathlon, hopefully with a swim in water over 55 F (13 C) degrees, a long way over that ...
Monday:
Into the pool, and I set myself the goal of doing 100 laps, which is about 1.4 miles or 2.25km. I did it in about 44 minutes, which I was pretty happy with. The issue I am currently finding, while there isn't a drop off in the speed the longer I go, but I don't seem to be getting any faster.
Tuesday:
Tried to push myself on the run. Decided to try 5 miles (8 km), I got through it pretty well, just under 40 minutes. My watch said it was 4.9 miles, Google maps said it was 5.1, so I am happy guessing it at 5 miles, so I did it in 8 minute miles (or 5 minute kilometers). Through the run I felt fine. But afterwards it wasn't so good. My knee swelled a little and was a bit achy for the next couple of days, which is a bit of a concern. 5 miles is probably a little to far. I may try two 3 mile runs next week and see how I go.
Wednesday:
Back in the pool, but not really feeling it, and I have to pick up Colleen from the airport, so it has to be short. 50 quick laps (.7 miles, 1.1 km). I forgot my watch and I was in too much of a hurry to check the time properly. I think it was around 20 minutes.
Thursday:
There is a big ride coming up on Saturday, so I try to take it easy. I go out relatively slowly for me riding on my own and I go around the normal loop in just over an hour. There was a lot of time stopped at the lights, with the difference between the total time and the moving time of about 7 minutes, over an hour 7 minutes this is nearly 10%! The moving ride time is 1 hour and 1 minute and my moving average is 19.7. It seems that this "slightly" off full paced ride only slows me down by a minute or 1 mph, but my heart rate was reduced by 10 bpm on average. So while riding at 95% of my top speed, I was 90% of my average "hard working" heart rate average. However without looking too deeply into it - it is easy to see one issue here. Since I know I was basically stopped for 8 minutes - the non-moving time has to be taken into account as well, as these rests may play a big role in reducing the average heart rate overall. Not sure how much time I want to spend "deeply" analyzing the stats, but I have the watch and the ability, if I really want to get the benefit from all the fancy stuff I bought, I probably should *sigh*.
Friday:
Colleen convinces me to go for a walk so we walk around "the dish". As it was getting late we didn't have the chance to do the "normal" dish walk of about 5 miles. So we had to take a different path onto the loop to reduce it so we could get it finished before dark. The walk in total then was just under 4 miles, and we had, what I thought, was a fairly impressive average walking pace of 14:30 minute miles. I think some, if not all of this was born out of Colleen's sense of competition when a mother and daughter went past us right at the start. Colleen saw to it that we caught and passed them. We were so far in front of them, that by the time they were approaching the finish they were still to far away for us to yell insults at them about their slow walking from the car as we drove away. We were that far ahead ...
Saturday:
The big ride. About 6 months ago I promised Koen (a Director at Cisco) a ride when he was back next, however when he called me on it - I had just had the surgery. This time he was out (he works in Amsterdam) I had to deliver. So I planned out a fairly decent ride where we would do about 50 miles. Colleen cam too however she went around the hills that we went over.
We started out picking him up from the hire place, out to OLH (Colleen went straight to the bottom of Canada for pastries). Koen sorted me out up OLH, he was probably finished for a minute before I got to the top. The gears were killing me, I couldn't keep a cadence. I have the new cassette at home and it will be going on this week. However despite that, and Koen. I looked at the clock not too long after I started (33:20), and checked at the top (57:20) and it showed a difference of 24 minutes. Assuming a whole minute had passed at the bottom before I looked Koen still pushed me a minute faster than I had gone before, meaning he must have done it in about 24 minutes. Very well done. I am very keen to see what I can do with the "easier" cassette on the back.
The rest of the ride was fairly tame in comparison. Up Canada, with Koen and I doing a loop through the back of San Mateo and chasing Colleen back down Canada, then back home. All in all about 52 miles with a moving speed of 16.5 mph, which is not too bad considering being on OLH for 30 minutes at about 7mph. Koen did really well on a hired bike (especially on OLH from which i am still smarting). Link to the ride here.
Sunday:
Did feel like doing much, but when Colleen went to Yoga I convinced myself to hit the pool, which I later learnt from this article may be the best thing I could have done. Although it specifically call out riding ... that is close enough to riding in my mind.
I did 2 km (1.24 miles), 88 laps. The tough part was making sure I wasn't passed by those in the laps closest to me. A guy jumped into the lane to my right as i hot about lap 20 and he went fairly quickly for 10 laps before stopping. Then at about lap 30 a guy jumped in sharing my lane and he put me into a bit of tough place trying to keep him from passing me. But a he stopped and started doing sets and I was keeping in front of him while he was doing those as well. The biggest challenge in this self created racing was the girl that started sharing the lane on my right. She was really fast and the only reason she didn't pass me is she started doing backstroke for 2 laps out of every 6 or so. Even then it as tough for me to keep in front of her! In the end I did the 2k (1.24 miles) in less than 37 minutes (the watch said 36:xx but then I bumped the button before memorizing it). That is over 3 miles of swimming this week.
Overall:
I definitely need to get that cassette onto my back wheel for OLH, and then I need to practice so I am ready for Koen's next ride! I need to figure out how to get faster in the pool, which will probably require doing some sort of planned activity, rather than just jumping in the pool and swimming bunch of laps. I need to ensure that the running I do is enough for the exercise I need, but not too much for my knee to handle. I also need to find a new triathlon, hopefully with a swim in water over 55 F (13 C) degrees, a long way over that ...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)